Packers 2011 tickets to honor 1961 team

The Green Bay Packers’ 2011 season tickets celebrate both the recent and the distant past.

The Super Bowl XLV championship is commemorated on this year’s preseason tickets, with a foil, embossed image of the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the two home games against Arizona and Kansas City.

Speaking of Lombardi, the 50th anniversary of the 1961 title – the first of Lombardi’s five championships as head coach – is remembered with historic photos of different star players from ’61 on the tickets for each of the eight regular-season home games.

Lombardi won five league titles in a seven-year span, beginning in ’61. The Packers went 11-3 that year to win the Western Conference. Green Bay then defeated the New York Giants in the NFL Championship, 37-0, on New Year’s Eve.

Mark Wagner, the Packers’ director of ticket operations, said the idea to recognize Lombardi’s first title came up last year as the Packers were in the process of winning their 13th league championship. The timing was right with the 50th anniversary in 2011.

“It will be interesting to see if younger fans know enough about the history of the Green Bay Packers to know who these players are, because they’re not identified on the tickets,” Wagner said. “Maybe it provides a little history lesson to figure out who they are.”

The player on the ticket for the regular-season opener on Sept. 8 is Hall of Fame fullback Jim Taylor. Including Lombardi, a total of 11 Packers from the ’61 team are enshrined in Canton.

All of the 1961 photos, which are in black and white, are from the collection of Vernon Biever, the longtime team photographer who passed away last year.